by Robert Ferro
This air of sanctity had lasted for weeks afterward. But the daily raunchiness and general banality of high school life wore him down little by little. One day a person he hardly knew gave him the finger in the hall, out of pure malice and ill will it seemed, and to Max it was like finding excrement smeared on the temple doors. He was glad he had told no one of his imagined vocation because it enabled him to forget all about it quietly.
John had lately spent several weekends at this same monastery, which was called St Mark’s, although he had had no connection with it or the church since leaving Indian River. Having also helped to build the new retreat house at St Mark’s he said he now felt comfortable accepting the abbot’s hospitality. There was nowhere else he felt truly peaceful.
But in addition to this new religious habit, John had also rediscovered another old but neglected hobby— gambling. On the weekends he didn’t go to St Mark’s, or during the week afterward, he drove to Atlantic City and shot craps for hours at a time. He lost, sometimes he won. After years of his being vague about the races, no one pressed him for totals. Jack said he could afford to lose thousands, if that’s what he wanted. It was none of their business. At any event the money was not the point. The point was the shift between the monastery and the casino. Miss Sacred and Miss Profane. It seemed offensively obvious to Max, but Robin said the force and directness of the metaphor, the clear-cut dichotomy of good and evil, was classic and very pleasing. It was going to be craps and doxies pushing drinks—to give it its most negative cast— fueled by the adrenaline of chance, or surrender to the idea of Christ. It was in itself a kind of gamble on which they might have wagered, but did not.
They did not know about women, if he was interested, or pursued the many opportunities offered in the casino. Max thought it might be difficult to court a seasoned cocktail waitress if you were prone to constant tears. She might think you odd—although in the casinos, rich covered odd nicely. On the other hand, perhaps it made him forget. Perhaps in the casino, as in the monastery, he was peaceful.
In the Pancake House John asked if Max was hungry.
Have something, he said, and Max ordered an English muffin and tea. His mother in this situation would have quickly, effortlessly struck the right conversational note. How are you, darling. Direct and well-intentioned. He saw his father then as now was not going to say anything so he said, How are you feeling? meaning physically.
John looked out the window and said, Oh … and two tears rolled down his cheeks. The waitress brought Max’s tea and John looked up and said he would have a cup too. She saw the tears and in spite of herself automatically crooned, Of course, dear. She was the kind of waitress who, with a better or perhaps earlier start in life, would have been a nurse. Now and then the Pancake House presented these mild crossover opportunities. People got ill, they cut themselves or fainted, but they never died.
Robin says you’re going to church every morning.
John nodded.
Does that help? he asked.
Yes, it does, John said, as if he were talking about a prescribed drug. It’s the only place I feel right. And at the cemetery.
What about the house? he asked.
I … I just miss her there. John put his head down, nearly into his crossed arms. He looked up again through tears. Robin had said he told her Marie was in the house and that he talked to her all the time.
I have the feeling, Max said, that she’s with me sometimes.
Oh, so do I, John said eagerly. So do I. But then afterward you realize, she’s gone.
And the monastery? He did not want to sound accusatory but his father’s sudden shift to God seemed in a way cowardly. God would now solve his problems.
It’s very nice, John replied vaguely. The abbot said I could come any time I like.
I remember it, Max said. From high school.
Oh, it’s completely different now, John corrected. They’ve got the new retreat house we built.
What do you mean, we?
I built that retreat house, John said flatly. And they know it.
Well, then they should be glad to see you, Max said. Sure. Of course they are. The abbot is a hell of a guy. And the casinos and Atlantic City and all of that? Max said. How can you go back and forth like that?
Why not? John asked calmly. It’s not sinful.
It’s not particularly holy either. It’s gambling.
I’ve always liked to gamble, John said. It relaxes me. It’s a change. It’s a place to go.
It certainly is a change from St Mark’s, Max agreed. Don’t you get culture shock going back and forth like that?
His father shrugged and didn’t answer. The image popped into Max’s head of the abbot in robes, dancing ineptly with a Playboy bunny.
The waitress brought John’s tea and Max’s muffin and smiled to show how proud she was that John had managed to stop bawling. They settled down.
Max said, I’m worried about that urn. As he said it, he realized the monument was the last, the only connection between them.
What about it? John was relieved at the emergence of this safe topic.
Someone could steal it. Or take the top, Max said.
But John had committed himself completely to the idea of an urn, to put flowers in. An urn appealed to his sense of class. The Fricks had urns. He did not want to stick flowers in a hole in the ground. We’ll nail it down, he said. We’ll get two tops. I’ll keep one in the car.
What about maintenance? Max said. This was now a normal conversation between them, in which Max asked pertinent, even penetrating questions, and his father gave answers and opinions that then were open to amendment.
They offer Perpetual Care, John replied.
How much does it cost? Max was pleased you could arrange to have the grass cut through eternity.
Three thousand.
Only one payment? By this he meant, what happened in two thousand years when everything was exchanged for light instead of scrip? Would the price for Perpetual Care still be the same?
Only one charge, John said. You pay it any way you want.
After a moment Max said, How much will the monument cost?
I don’t know, John replied. I’m not so sure about this guy Don.
What’s the matter with him?
I don’t know where he gets his prices. Pulls them out of a hat, I think. People seldom cheated John because he assumed they all tried.
Twenty, twenty-five, he added, referring to the cost of the monument.
How much is all that, including the funeral and everything? Max said.
Everything? His father shifted his weight and sat up straighter. Sixty, seventy thousand. Plus the landscaping. It’ll be the nicest plot in the cemetery, John said. By far.
The waitress stopped to ask if they would like something else. She wrote out a check like an autograph and dropped it on the table. As Max watched his father absently set the check aside, he wondered what the highest bill was that John would be able to pay—walk up and say, I’ll take that, how much? and write a check, or fish it out of a bank on impeccable personal and corporate credit. Thousands of course, tens of thousands, possibly if not probably hundreds of thousands; maybe even a million. One of the principles of their relationship seemed to be a mutual inflation of John’s material wealth. John liked to think he was richer than he was and continually gave that impression to Max, most often through inflated statistics. And the more money he thought his father had, the easier it seemed to understand him. It had been during moments of true largesse, of expansive financial and material gestures—like the purchase of a dozen suits at Barney’s, or of a huge car or a jewel for Marie—that Max thought he saw his father most clearly.
It had been John’s intention, Max knew, to be lavish about Marie’s burial, as lavish as she would have permitted, balanced against as lavish as he dared. He had been so influenced by her that now, with both his life and hers in pieces around him, he picked up anything that resembled her, and kept it as his own.
He constantly wondered what Marie would have done or wanted or insisted on, and then did the same. In this he tended to be accurate, if inclined to embellish in favor of the most expensive, believing Marie always preferred the best when she had merely required that something be well made. Max served the purpose of toning it all down, and yet managed always to help John spend even more. The truth was they both believed they should spend money on her now. If she had not taken it with her it was perhaps up to them to send it on after her—an Egyptian way of death. This attitude was also complicated by more personal aspects. Besides burying Marie, John was arranging for the eventual disposition of his own body. He thought of this nearly every time he looked at the plot. He had put Marie’s grave to the right of center—with a line drawn from between the pillows—in order to leave half for himself. And unless otherwise specified, whoever else died from now on would be buried there too. Max did not see himself specifying otherwise.
To have pinpointed the probable location of his bones, left in the world after him in a certain spot—beside Mr and Mrs Magreb, and Colonel Willingham who had bought it in Spain—this knowledge had a different effect on Max than on his father. To begin with he tried not to think of it. When it did occur, he imagined himself standing over his own grave, years hence; standing on the plot but also buried in it. He tried to store up the image of being above the ground and in it at the same time—simply dead and alive. But the result was the momentary feeling of having slipped by some macabre reversal into the ground instead. For a moment he felt himself fading out, going transparent and flowing like a heavy mist through the grass, into the vault below. It all came to him in the sudden chill he felt just before drawing back.
His father said, How are you making out?
All right, he replied. I miss her. This indulgence nearly caused him to cry too, but he stopped himself. They drank. Max ate his muffin.
John said, I hear you’ve got a job with a caterer.
That’s right.
Well, what’s it like?
I serve dinners with Irish waitresses at Jewish country clubs. I pass hors d’oeuvres. I work in the kitchen. I am a waiter, he said.
Does that give you enough for you to live on?
It’s all right, he said.
You’re the one who doesn’t want any help, John said.
Let’s not go into that here. Max suddenly sensed the elusive but satisfying appeal of a public scene, the tremors from neighboring booths, that dark, you’ve-ruined-our-pancakes look. In that moment he hated the disparity in their lives and attitudes, the gulfs between them.
Well, how long can this sort of thing go on? John said.
What do you mean? Max said, knowing what he meant. How long can what go on?
Is that the kind of job you want for yourself?
What the hell business is it of yours?
Don’t you have debts?
Everyone has debts.
How are you going to pay them? How are you going to live?
We’ll manage. Nick makes money.
You’ll manage, his father repeated. Is that the way you want to live?
I didn’t plan it this way, did you?
His father was startled. No, of course not. But whichever way it happened, can’t we do something about it?
Like what?
Why don’t you let me help you?
Why should you?
Oh come on, Max. You’re my son. No matter what, you’re my son.
That’s bullshit. Worst fears confirmed, faces in the neighboring booths turned as if toward a nasty smell. This was a scene.
John made a sudden movement, sliding across the leatherette to stand up. Look, I’ve got to get out of here, he said.
That suits me, Max said, and was up before his father and out the door. He got into his car and with a squeal of tires, drove off.
XI.
TWO MONTHS AFTER MARIE’S FUNERAL one of John’s nephews got married. In conversation with Penny and Max at the reception Aunt Clara said, So what’s this about your father going into a monastery? He’s going to become a monk?
Max was astonished but managed not to alter his expression. Penny was less surprised. She said, Yes, he was thinking about it.
He told us he’s going to do it, Clara said, widening her eyes. A trial. A few months to see if he likes it.
In between his now regular trips to the monastery and Atlantic City John occasionally visited his family in Brooklyn. Recently he had invited all the Desiderios to Hillcrest for the weekend; it was not surprising that Clam had the latest news.
I think he’s serious, she said. Clara was used to the insidious, inexorable losses and disappointments of life. But it was deeply shocking to her that her brother the tycoon, who had everything—which none of them had— was now going to give it all away. She turned to Max.
He has to take a vow of poverty, you know. Same as a priest. Worse; not even a dime in his pocket.
ROBIN SAID JOHN HAD MEANT ONLY that they should return to Hillcrest to finish the conversation rather than continue it in the Pancake House, but that Max had run away. This was not the way it was, but Max felt much of their relationship had been determined by misinterpretation. He and John pretended it had not happened, a simple expedient. Max asked him about the monastery. He said he was going in for six months starting in January.
A polite suicide. According to Robin, now standing hip deep in familiar waters, this was Acting Out. John had come up with a plan of action. It was surrender to an idea; the removal of all responsibility. Someone else might have quit his job and gone on welfare. This was the reverse; he was required to quit for God. The church would be his welfare. He would put himself in God’s hands.
John asked Jack to take over Mara Products while he was in the monastery. Jack said he would take over, but not just for six months. This was not, supposedly, a strategy of Jack’s ambition, but an effort to make John realize what he was giving up.
The same week as the wedding a letter came for Nick on Chinese notepaper Marie had kept in the dining room buffet.
Dear Nick,
Writing this kind of letter is not my specialty; but since I was asked to do it and I have agreed— here goes.
At the outset let me say that I am sorry for hurting you. There never was any intent to do so. This should not be hard to believe since in the many years that I have known you, I have looked upon you as one of the family. Had I not treated you as such we would have had a confrontation a very long long time ago.
The incident that occurred in February of this year did not develop by design. It just happened. Before I go any further I would like to point out that I have differed vehemently many times with people I have loved and love, including my mother and father, my wife and each and every one of my children At no time did my love waver, because of these differences.
Removing Andrea’s masterpiece from the wall without discussing it, I admit, was wrong. But, this in no way should be interpreted that you are rejected and not accepted in the family. As a person I have a high esteem for your talents and social graces and I only hope that you will accept my explanation and if you feel there is need for further discussion, then let’s do discuss it as father and son would, person to person.
I will be very pleased if you and Max would arrange to come to dinner in Hillcrest—soon.
Best regards, Dad Desir
To which a week later Nick replied:
It’s a hard thing to do, to resolve what has happened, but I appreciate your writing to me, and your apology.
What occurred in February is still very much with me, I am sorry to say. It seemed to me then a betrayal of what I thought of as an open, affectionate and respectful relationship. Your act displayed a kind of rigidity and cruelty that I was simply unprepared for. By seeking to destroy what was a beautiful and loving gesture by a beautiful and loving child, you betrayed more than our relationship, you betrayed fifteen years of family. Part of the pain of all this is that the large world seems int
ent on this same lesson of bigotry and intolerance. The large world, though, can be held at bay; you can retreat to loving friends and family for sustenance and self-respect. When, in that retreat, you are stung with the same venom as in the outside world, the wound is all the more devastating.
I don’t know where we go from here. Self-respect is such a hard commodity to come by; I am in no hurry to risk mine again. I would like to think there is some path back to what was; I would like to think there is some good that can come out of this. But I don’t know what it is.
Still, to acknowledge what has happened, instead of ignoring it, to deal with it, finally, cannot be a bad thing.
I appreciate your writing to me, and I hope you will take these words of mine as what they are, an honest attempt to communicate my feelings.
Yours, Nick
They did not go to dinner in Hillcrest. Nick took the exchange of letters as the first step in an involved rapprochement, to be completed in several formal stages. John considered the matter nearly closed. As requested he had rehung the tapestry—not in the den but in the upper hall—and had now written, he thought, a generous letter of apology. Nick thought the letter did little more than restate the issues. It did not offer to make amends in any way. And he and Max wanted the tapestry back on the same wall from which it had been removed—with the oval silhouettes of the three older girls done by a man with scissors in Disneyland; with the pictures of the beach house and the Mara, with Marie’s needlepoint, with all the familiar faces—and not hanging in a dark hallway no one ever used.
